Marlon Defillo denies wrongdoing in Henry Glover case

A day after he retired as the New Orleans Police Department's second-highest-ranking officer amid scrutiny of his failure to investigate charges that officers killed a man and burned the body shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo on Friday steadfastly denied that he did anything wrong in connection with the case.

Speaking at an afternoon news conference at his attorney's office, Defillo said he ended his 32-year career to protect his family from any distress that might have followed from a disciplinary hearing he had been scheduled to face Friday.

At that hearing, Superintendent Ronal Serpas was to have meted out Defillo's punishment for neglect of duty, a violation -- identified in recent weeks by the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau -- that could have resulted in termination or heavy sanctions.

Flanked by more than a dozen supporters, including former Superintendent Eddie Compass, Defillo read from a written statement before he calmly fielded questions from the media, a skill he honed over more than two decades as an NOPD spokesman.

Defillo said he was "extremely disheartened" by the charge "that I looked the other way," adding that any characterizations of his actions as "disgraceful" are "not only untrue but they are offensive."

Responding to suggestions that he "should have done more," Defillo said no one has said "what else I should have done" and that he can't envision how any "reasonable person" would have done "more than what I did."

As soon as he learned in 2008 that police might have been involved in a death three years earlier, Defillo said, he contacted the Orleans Parish coroner's office. To this day, he said, the death of Henry Glover "has not been classified as a murder or a homicide."

Nonetheless, one officer has been convicted in federal court of killing Glover and another of burning his body.

Defillo said he hasn't been accused of any crimes or broken any laws, adding that he believes the single administrative violation leveled against him was a "last resort" by the NOPD to find someone at fault. He would not say whether he thinks he was the victim of a "witch hunt."

Leaves with 'head high'

"I am proud of my record," Defillo said, adding that none of the nine superintendents he has served under "questioned my integrity, my honesty and my dedication."

Defillo said he leaves the department "with my head high."

As for his future plans, he said he thinks he is "marketable" and "a very ambitious person" who can "go out into the workforce, the private sector, and do good."

Without offering specifics, he said he intends to remain in New Orleans as a "visible" member of the community.

Among the supporters who joined Defillo were the Revs. John Raphael and Willie Gable, local business owners Sandra and Pete Rhodes, former Vieux Carre Commission Director Steve Hand, community activist Dyan French Cole and Defillo's attorney, Robert Jenkins.

Asked to comment on the events that led to Defillo's retirement, Compass had little to say. "He's my best friend and I'm just gonna support my friend," he said. "I've learned in my retirement, I'm very guarded in my words."

The Glover case is considered one of the most shocking civil rights cases in the city's recent history.

Documents obtained by The Times-Picayune revealed that Defillo was made aware in June 2008 of a possible NOPD role in the killing of the 31-year-old Glover in Algiers on Sept. 2, 2005, and a subsequent cover-up.

Six months later, the Nation magazine printed an article questioning the circumstances of Glover's death. The NOPD responded with a news release saying the agency had no evidence that substantiated the allegations and asking that anyone with information call Defillo.

Eventually, the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into Glover's death, leading to the June 2010 indictment of five officers on numerous civil rights charges. Two of them were convicted in December.

As part of the federal probe, Defillo testified under oath before a federal grand jury and revealed a timeline of events that cast a pall of suspicion over his actions, according to the testimony, which was obtained by the newspaper.

Defillo acknowledged that as a deputy chief, he received a call in 2008 alerting him that a journalist was working on a story that linked officers to Glover's death.

Defillo call to coroner's office

Defillo testified that he called the coroner's office and was told that Glover's body had been found burned in a vehicle on the levee. The matter was considered an "unclassified death," and Defillo said he left it at that, never pressing further.

When the Nation article was released in December 2008, the NOPD had little response.

In February 2009, an Algiers man, who had tried to assist Glover after he was wounded by police gunfire, went to the NOPD and filed a complaint. William Tanner asked Defillo to get the NOPD to pay for his vehicle, which he believed had been incinerated by police with Glover's body inside.

A short time later, Defillo called several mid- and high-level officers who he believed might have known more about the Glover incident than they had revealed. Defillo asked several broad questions and didn't press the matter. He took no notes and never wrote a report.

He assigned the case to veteran NOPD Sgt. Gerard Dugue, who at the time was himself under investigation for his role in an alleged cover-up of the Danziger Bridge police shootings around the same time as Glover's death. Dugue was later indicted and is slated to go to trial in federal court in September. Defillo ordered Dugue to "answer to me directly," he testified, yet he never pressed Dugue or inquired about the status of the investigation.

Countless 'bizarre stories'

On Friday, Defillo said the federal immigration agent who first contacted him about the Glover incident offered few details.

"I pressed my colleague for more information: who was the victim, where did it occur, how did it happen," Defillo said. "He responded, 'I don't know,' to each of my questions."

Citing what he said were countless "bizarre stories" circulating in Katrina's aftermath that people had been murdered, raped, molested or robbed, Defillo said, "This story seemed to be in that vein."

He said, "It would not have been feasible to send officers out to investigate each and every one of these hundreds of allegations," the vast majority of which "ultimately proved to be fictitious or fabrication."

At the time he was first alerted to Glover's death, he said, there was "no time" to distinguish the allegations in that case from the plethora of other stories circulating.

"The fact that the allegations in the Glover case turned out to be true, this is something that haunts me today," Defillo said.

"I do not see how I could have reasonably pursued any other course of action other than what I did," he said. He followed department protocol and contacted the coroner's office, he said.

As for his January 2009 phone conversation with Tanner, Defillo said Tanner made no mention of Glover's death. "He asked me in 2009, 'Who's going to buy me a car?'" Defillo said.

Defillo said he learned of the possible police homicide only after Tanner met with the commander of the Public Integrity Bureau. He said that on that same day, the FBI was contacted about possible civil rights violations.

He said it is his "sincere hope" that the Glover family "finds comfort in knowing that the men who murdered Mr. Henry Glover are in jail and will be there for a very long time and that the officers who concealed their knowledge of those crimes will pay."

A highly visible officer

Most recently the deputy superintendent for the Operations Division, Defillo has long been one of the city's best-known and most visible police officers. He rose through the ranks and went on to command the public information office, the internal affairs unit and, later, the investigative division.

As head of the investigative division, Defillo escaped unscathed following a scandal within the NOPD's Sex Crimes Unit, which was found to have downgraded sexual assault complaints.

During the week between former Superintendent Warren Riley's retirement last year and the swearing-in of Serpas, Defillo served as acting police chief.